Hi Tom.
I do see your point in trying to give people who have not played the
original the same experience, however my problem is what usually happens
when a game is translated to audio from an original graphical conceptmy
problem is that when a developer simply cannot replicate a mechanic in audio
that mechanic gets missed.
Take Liam's duckhunt for example. The original Duckhunt was challenging
because the ducks could move at any angle across the screen, and the player
had to either target them with the nes connected gun, or (even more
difficult), line up a circle with his/her pad on the screen. The lining up
targeting process was complex sinse the player could never guarantee his/her
target was in the right place and it required the player to track the
movement of his/her target, and the movement of the oncoming duck.
Sinse however there wasn't a way to replicate the vertical movement or
random target lining up of the ducks, we end up with a sterrio targeting
game where the player hears the sound of the duck and must hit space when
it's in the center, thus all the need to coordinate the original target
position vs the position of the oncoming duck is missing from the game and
once again we have a reaction test boppit affair.
This is why I suggest instead of completely missing out a mechanic which is
difficult to do in audio as most developers have done, and thus ending up
with a less challenging and paler copy of the original lacking many of it's
features, we considder adding audio mechanics to approximate the original
challenge.
I've seen far too many attempts to replicate mainstream games in audio that
ran into this problem, from space invaders, to duckhunt, and yes,
montizuma's revenge, indeed about the only game which I've seen succeed in
replicating all the mechanics is audio pong, and that just for the obvious
reason that pong has very few mechanics to worry about.
On the other hand, games like packman talks which utterly changed the
mechanical elements to add additional challenges to the game have been very
successful, precisely because! where something isn't possible to do in audio
an additional mechanic is substituted to make up for it, egg losing the
multi object spacial overview of original packman but having an fps explorer
with the need for fast evasive action instead.
This is why i'm rather coming to the conclusion that trying to exactly
replicate mainstream mechanics and simply miss off the less doable ones is a
less successful path for game design.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
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